The current vogue for all things terrazzo has proved a strange personal experience. When I was just 18 months old, way back in 1961, my family moved to a new house that my parents had had designed and built, largely using reclaimed materials, to be our forever family home.
It is only now that I am appreciating just what a rare, unusual and beautiful house it was: particularly for England in the early 1960s. For instance, the entire ground floor featured electric underfloor heating laid beneath a grey and burnt umber terrazzo tiled floor. My father, a commercial airline pilot, regularly brought back unusual items to our home after trips abroad. Usually they were exotic food and drink items but, clearly, sometimes cutting-edge design inspiration also found its way into his baggage.
So visiting Cersaie this year was a rapid-fire series of deja vu flashbacks; all filtered through my childhood memories of, what for me, will always be the defining standard in terrazzo aesthetics.
There were many strong terrazzo-inspired collections at the show: some bold, colourful, and vibrant; other more restrained, subtle and, frankly, more commercial.
Firmly in the latter camp was Edilgres with E-Street Arch, one of a range of innovative floor and wall collections with refined aesthetics and high technical performance exhibited by this Kale Group brand.
E-Street Arch, which has already gone down well at the American tile and stone event Coverings, is a porcelain stoneware range with a refined texture. Featuring natural shades enriched by tone-on-tone inserts, E-Street Arch is perfect for designing spaces with clean lines and a cosy yet contemporary atmosphere, in line with the latest interior trends.
The 10mm tiles are available in natural, and gloss polished finishes in 300 by 600, 600 by 600 and 600 by 1,200mm formats. The graduated neutral colour range features Ice, Sand, Grey, Smoke, and Graphite. The design options include a four colour mix in 300 by 300mm, 25 by 25mm mosaics, straight edge linear step, RH and LH straight edge angular step, and skirting.
A new post by Joe Simpson, Dairy of a Tile Addict, October 2017.